


When You Danced with Me

by oboe_she_didnt



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, And then all the fluff, Anne can sing, F/M, Talent Shows, a tiny bit of performance anxiety, established shirbert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:47:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27678293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oboe_she_didnt/pseuds/oboe_she_didnt
Summary: It’s almost Anne and Gilbert’s one-year anniversary and Anne just knows she has to do something above and beyond for him; after all, his gifts when they *weren’t* dating were pretty amazing. So when their school’s annual talent show ends up on their anniversary date, she gets a brilliant idea…
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	When You Danced with Me

It began, as high school schemes tend to do, as a bit of an offhand joke.

Anne was lying on her back with her head on her backpack, listening to the din of the choir classroom. Normally they would be working on their selections for the concert, either winter or spring, but last night had been the annual Christmas concert and so in these final days before winter break the choir students of Avonlea High were offered a bit of a free period. In theory, it would be to study for any last-minute tests the teachers wanted to throw their way. In practice, it was a time to play games on their phones, take turns messing around on the piano, and just hang out. 

It was Diana’s turn on the piano for a bit. She had already jazzed up a couple Christmas songs they had covered in the concert and was currently trying her hand at playing the chords for a newish pop song by ear. Ruby was lying across a few of the chairs closest to the piano and humming along. Normally Anne would be rather in the present as well, possibly humming along or looking up chords and plucking them out on the untuned dilapidated guitar perpetually perched in the back corner by their music binders. But right now Anne was in a bit of a pickle and needed to stay in her imagination.

Diana stopped her playing as Anne closed her eyes for a bit of thinking. “You’re not going to sleep, are you?”

“No,” Anne replied, opening her eyes ruefully. “I’m stuck.”

“With what?” Ruby asked.

“I don’t know what to get Gilbert for our one-year anniversary,” Anne said, sitting up and facing her friends. “I already have a Christmas present, which is fine, but I feel like the anniversary gift has to be, I don’t know, bigger? More special? It’s not fair that he’s such a good gift-giver. Even when we weren’t dating he would always give me the most thoughtful things.” She thought back to the little French-English dictionary he had picked up during a summer job, back before they were really even friends, and snuck it into her locker somehow just before Christmas two years ago with an inside joke as a note and a slightly bashful “I saw it and thought of you” accompanied by him rubbing his neck when she thanked him for it weeks later.

“That is tough. What do you get for the boy who absolutely worships the ground you walk upon? You could give him a doodle from your Biology notes and he’d frame it,” Diana said, rolling her eyes. 

“Even though I can’t draw.”

“Gilbert can’t sing, but that didn’t stop him from serenading you as you helped out with harvest this year, or so you told me,” Diana laughed.

That was true. For as much as Gilbert liked to sing, loudly and proudly, it was not a voice one would compare to an angel’s, hence why Anne was in choir with her two best female friends and not her boyfriend.

“You should sing him a song. That’d make him fall over,” Ruby said nonchalantly and not very seriously, picking at her pink nails and unaware at how Anne and Diana’s eyes immediately snapped to meet the other’s, followed by bosom friends simultaneously speaking each other’s minds as bosom friends only can do,

“I should write him a song!”

“You should write him a song!”

“Okay, that might actually work,” Anne said, pulling out the notebook she usually reserved for poetry and set her pencil on a blank page, waiting for inspiration to come. “Nothing. At least I have over a month.”

“I’ll help you with the music,” Diana promised. Anne nodded, writing a few topic ideas down as the last minutes of class winded down.

Just before the bell was to ring, and the trio of senior girls had to head off to Biology, the choir teacher had an announcement.

“As you all know, our annual school talent show is held at the end of January during our spirit week. Auditions will be the Wednesday you get back, so start working on your acts over the break.”

Someone asked the date of the talent show and the teacher replied, “It’ll be on January 24th.”

Ruby nudged Anne hard at that. Rubbing her shoulder, she nodded. She now had a deadline, because of course this year the talent show would fall on their anniversary. And what could be more romantic than a public declaration of love through song? At the very least, it would top anything Gilbert would come up with, that was for certain.

One week later, she was facedown on her bed with an empty notebook page in front of her, no inspiration, no clever turns of phrases, not even lines of poems that could be converted into song lyrics. Diana had come along to help and was noodling with Anne’s 4-octave keyboard, trying out different chord progressions with the hope that maybe a certain mood would evoke some thoughts.

“There are so many things I could write about,” Anne said. “And I don’t want it to be some gushy love song. I’d ask Ruby for that. I want it to be profound.”

“Are you sure you want to write a song, then? Why not just a poem? You could still recite it, or give it to him. Use your ink pen and make it all fancy.”

“It has to be a song.” Of that, Anne was certain. While she was the one who wrote for fun, Gilbert had been known to turn a phrase or two over the past year. She had a few handwritten notes which had been secretly stuffed in her pocket or books while he passed her in class which she was not willing to display but rather keep close to her heart.

“Okay,” Diana said and started to absent-mindedly play what sounded like a vaguely familiar melody. It didn’t quite sound pop, though, more folk…

“Diana, what is that?”

“The Dashing White Sergeant. Remember when they made us learn all those country dances in PE so we’d look good in ‘upholding the tradition’ during the harvest festival?”

“Yeah, I do…” Anne was swept up in memories, some good, some bad. The festival in question had been the previous year, when they were juniors and she and Gilbert were not yet together. They had been partnered up a few times during PE dance practice, but he had seemed to maneuver his way towards her for this dance specifically and really melted the ice in their tentative friendship, which held until the festival itself. Then Gilbert had decided to ask another girl as his date to the surprise of pretty much everyone, Anne included, and she had to fight an unfamiliar jealousy all night. Even though they danced together a couple times it was only due to the nature of some of the dances that traded partners. The Dashing White Sergeant was one of them. And then, during prom, after they got together, as a bit of a joke some of the seniors had thrown on a playlist of country dance tunes for a few dances. That night had been so special, and brought that specific dance back into her good graces. “Diana, that’s it.”

“What? Give DWS lyrics?”

“No. The song is about us dancing. It parallels our relationship, how we got closer, and grew apart with the whole Winnie business, and then we had fun at prom when all the drama was over.”

“And maybe incorporate part of the dance melody? Or chords?” 

“Let’s see what we can do,” Anne said and, smiling, the two girls got to work.

~~~~~

“I am starting to regret this,” Anne said, arms crossed over her stomach as she waited in the wings for her turn on the talent show stage. 

Diana slung her arm over her shoulders and squeezed her lightly. “You’ll be wonderful. We practiced so much, and Gilbert is going to love it no matter what.”

“Yeah. Okay. No matter what.” Anne closed her eyes and pictured a rogue grin and hazel eyes, immediately a balm for her nerves. 

Jerry, one of the stage hands, whispered she was next. 

“Break a leg, Cuthbert,” he said, lightly punching her on the arm. She smiled slightly, looked back for one last thumbs-up from Diana, and stepped onto the stage. 

She walked over to the piano, wiping her slightly sweaty fingers over the smooth fabric of her trousers. Diana had told her to wear pants (“It’s just easier to play piano in pants, especially if you’re not comfortable with the instrument.”) and she had paired her best black dress trousers with a dark green sweater. Resting around her neck was the little fox necklace Gilbert had gotten her for Christmas. 

The walk to the piano was only a few steps away from the wings and Anne sat down on the bench and adjusted the microphone. 

“Hi everyone. I’m Anne Shirley-Cuthbert and I wrote a song I’m gonna sing. This is also my piano-playing debut, and since Di taught me if this goes poorly you can blame her!” Slight laughter; Diana was well-known as the best musician in the school. “Um, so this is ‘When You Danced with Me’. Happy anniversary, Gil.” The calming breath she took did not quite overpower the small gasps and excited noises from the audience. Anne and Gilbert were a popular couple at this point, with their class especially scrutinizing their every move up until and well after they got together. She placed her fingers lightly on the keys and began to play.

Diana had picked chords that were not too far from each other, writing the music specifically so she wouldn’t have to jump her fingers all over the place. After playing many, many times, Anne became more comfortable. It was like playing on a guitar, using both hands to make a chord, creating a little accompanying rhythm for each chord change, anchoring her song so she could just sing. 

The song ended up being a little more gushy love song than she had originally intended, but apparently she was as a fool in love as Gilbert was. 

“I need to reference _Pride and Prejudice_ somehow,” she said to Diana after they had mapped out how many verses, how many measures, and how exactly they were tweaking the rhythm of the last 8 measures of the Dashing White Sergeant to sound more syncopated and pop and less...country dance. 

“Well, what was that you said to me after PE that day?”

“I was Lizzy Bennet dancing with her Darcy.” Anne pondered for a moment. “Can you play the Dashing White Sergeant part we decided on?”

Diana had complied, playing it a few times, slowly, quickly.

“I got it!” Anne exclaimed. “Play the second phrase, starting on the B.” Diana did and Anne sang along, “My own Darcy swept me off my feet.”

“That’s it. That’s definitely it,” Diana said, and the rest of the song practically wrote itself. That one line was the catalyst that opened up the creative channels of Anne’s mind and once it was written, it was just a matter of memorizing and practicing and making perfect.

While performing, Anne was less worried about the singing. Singing was easy for her, natural, fun, though this was definitely a different type of singing than she was used to. Here, she was singing _to_ Gilbert, not with him. It was a more vulnerable kind of singing than the Taylor Swift on the way to school or Christmas carols while baking cookies with Mary they usually engaged in together.

The piano playing, by this point, was a muscle memory, but she kept her eyes glued to the keys, afraid if she let her concentration slip for one second she would forget, for instance, which key her right pinkie finger went on next and then Diana’s clever chord progression (“This is not your basic 4-chord pop song, Cuthbert. You’re gonna appreciate the secondary dominant for what it is.”) would be ruined.

But it went well. At least, she thought it went well. She didn’t remember faltering, missing a note, cracking her voice, or any of the usual performance worries. Shaking out her hands, she pushed the bench back and stood up to take her bow. As she did, applause started, as loud as it had been for the other performers, which put a small smile on her face. She took a moment to savor the sound of the applause (and by following her director’s instruction of bowing only as long as it took to say “these are my shoes” in her head) and as she looked up again to face the audience and then head off to the wings to enjoy the rest of the show she caught movement up the stairs on the side of the stage.

Before she could register what was happening, her planned “escape” back to the wings was cut off by someone wrapping her in the biggest, warmest, tightest hug she had ever received.

“...Gil?”

“I am so, so proud of you. That was...I have no words. I loved it,” Gilbert said in her ear, still holding her like he was not about to let go anytime soon. She hugged him back, feeling any lingering anxiety on how the performance went dissipate. What happened didn’t matter. He loved it, he was here, and everything was okay.

“Surprise!” she said, muffled into his shirt. “I wanted to get you back for giving me so many thoughtful presents over the years.”

He didn’t have any response to that other than to kiss her, and she could hear every person in the audience stand up and applaud even louder. She could hear Jerry and Diana whistling from the wings and had a feeling Ruby was somewhere taking a video already being passed around their school’s social media. 

Gilbert dipped Anne back as though they were dancing and released her lips with a wink.

“Happy anniversary, Anne-girl.”

"Happy anniversary, Gil."

**Author's Note:**

> Wait, you say, don’t most of these kinds of fics give you the lyrics? About that...this is an actual song I ended up writing and performing! The link is right here! https://twitter.com/dianas_piano/status/1331205073570045953
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not have the same angelic voice as Amybeth Mcnulty (nor, I suppose, Anne), but I did have a lot of fun!
> 
> Also, fun fact: something similar to this happened at a talent show in high school, the circumstances and timing of which are from where I drew most of my inspiration. A girl sang (though I think it was just a cover) and accompanied herself in a song to her boyfriend, who came up onstage afterwards and gave her a big hug, standing ovation, etc., etc. Seemed like a very Shirbert thing to do.


End file.
